One hundred and fifty years ago, on Oct. 9, 1875, a Tamaqua man enlisted in the U.S. Army.

Today, his service under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer is reshaping a narrative in one of America’s most legendary war stories.

The Battle of Little Bighorn was part of the Great Sioux War of 1870. On that day of extreme bloodshed, Custer and his outnumbered regiment died violently after attacking an encampment of Sioux Indians in Dakota Territory — Custer’s Last Stand.

Traditional scholarship has maintained that the cavalry was killed, more than 260. But that’s not entirely true.

William Heath survived and lived another 15 years. He is buried in Tamaqua, despite being listed on the memorial monument at Little Bighorn.

Heath’s background

More details are coming into focus as a result of ongoing research by historians and genealogists, among them Heath’s great-granddaughter, Deb Heath Brumbaugh of Blair County.

“He was 4 years old when he left Staffordshire, England, for America, in 1850,” she said. “His father, Sam, came several months earlier, along with an uncle. I have William’s birth certificate, showing he was born in 1846.

“He grew up in Tamaqua, attended school in Tamaqua and did read and write. He moved to Girardville with his brother, Arthur, to work in the mine. He married in 1872, in Girardville.”

Records indicate that Heath also worked for a time for the Coal and Iron Police, and supposedly received death threats in the form of coffin notices tacked to his front door. They were attributed to reputed Molly Maguires, a band of Irish immigrant miners alleged to have caused terror in pursuit of workers’ rights.

The Army assigned Heath to Company L, Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territories, and sent him off to help crush a rebellion by Native Americans.

Civil War historian J. Stuart Richards hypothesized that Heath, a farrier, or one who tends to horses, left the battle line to take horses to the rear, away from the fighting.

“That was one of the roles of the farrier,” according to Richards. “When the cavalry dismounted, he’d take three horses and lead them to the back. Heath also could’ve been caring for an injured horse or a horse lagging behind because the farrier served almost like a veterinarian.”

Richards, a Vietnam veteran who passed away in 2024, joined with historian Mark Major to research Heath’s life.

He said Heath was found wounded and was nursed back to health during the ensuing winter by Lavina Ennis and family, early settlers.

Indebted to nursemaid Lavina, Heath promised if he ever fathered a daughter that he would name the child after her.

A return home

Heath is listed in the 1890 U.S. Census as a Tamaqua resident, 127 Orwigsburg St., where he died on May 2, 1891, of a brain tumor.

His descendants knew details of his story all along.

“They heard it from their grandmother, including the fact that he had lost part of an ear to frostbite when he was wintering in the Dakotas with Custer,” Brumbaugh said. “Story says he was always embarrassed about this and would wear a scarf of sorts.”

He kept to himself, although he was a longtime member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

He never claimed his military pension.

“Probably for the obvious reason of never fulfilling his five-year term. Yet the fact that he served with the Seventh at Little Bighorn is irrefutable,” author Vincent Genovese said in the 2003 book “Billy Heath: The Man Who Survived Custer’s Last Stand.”

There is one last detail to Heath’s story.

Records show he fathered nine children, among them a daughter born July 17, 1879.

True to his word, he named her Lavina, in honor of the nursemaid to whom he was indebted.

Heath’s body lies beneath a grave marker on the family plot next to wife Margaret Swansborough Heath.

Many more questions could be asked. But William Heath took the answers to his grave.

Coming next week: What do experts say? And what other details are revealed by Heath’s family?